


The Chance

by Morbane



Category: Easy Way Out - Low Roar (Song)
Genre: Constructive Criticism Welcome, Environmentalism, M/M, Magic, POV First Person, Politics, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-25
Updated: 2019-05-25
Packaged: 2020-03-17 05:05:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18958465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morbane/pseuds/Morbane
Summary: We could have saved the world, but I stepped away.





	The Chance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AlTheAlchemist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlTheAlchemist/gifts).



We were down there in the dark with our joined hands. The pressure built: that's how we knew we'd got it right. Else it could have just been the seven of us, waiting anxiously to see if anything would happen. But we didn't have to wait.

There wasn't really time to brace ourselves, either. It had to happen at the right moment, and somehow, each moment up until that moment was taken up with last-minute flurries and considerations. Gabriel was the one making complicated calculations calibrated to an atomic clock. Ancient rituals relied on the phases of the moon and constellations that rose at sunset or set at dawn. But now that we had decades of data from Hubble and others mapping the galaxy - now that the Earth had a glittering, swirling mantle of satellites with eyes above and eyes below, keeping everything in sync - the field of mysteries deepened too. Opportunities opened up at moments that had never been obvious before. We could pick out so many more voices, so many more chords that made up the harmony of the music of the spheres.

We had satellites and science and everything else that came with them. We had self-driving cars and gene tailoring and instantaneous translation and metal printing. And we had a dying world.

We were young, frustrated, idealistic, and terrified, and Garth brought us together. Garth, whom I met and was amused by as a dazzling, slick mover-and-shaker. Garth, the optimist in spite of it all. Garth, who turned out to be so much more than he appeared, who became someone whom I loved and who loved me back. Garth, who is still down there in the dark, in that disused culvert that just happened to lie at the optimal distance from true north and the optimal height above sea level. Garth convinced us that we could make a difference and buy the world time with a ritual as simple as it was hard. Collect the artefacts, make the preparations, say the words, and then set our selves against what _was_. We all believed that we believed deeply enough for it to work.

And so we made our preparations, and our vows, and aligned our tokens, and joined our hands, and spoke our words, and - 

Reality rippled away from us, not just changing but _leaving_ , going away. The space in which we found ourselves emptied of _sense_. It drained us of our purpose as we strained to keep in place. 

It didn't hurt. I remember that.

All we had to do was keep holding hands until it was over.

But I broke first. I wrenched my hands away and staggered back. There - there wasn't much light, but there was some, and that was what my eyes were seeing by again. The others were frozen, pinned by a moment of time like butterflies in a display. Garth's head had turned a fraction towards me, I know his mouth opened, I know he was trying to speak to me. 

Maybe I could have taken a deep breath, and taken a step back towards them, and taken their hands again, and we would have saved the world.

But I didn't do that. I climbed the ladder to the street and I looked around at the world as it appeared to me. Cars drove past. Pedestrians passed me. Some of them gave me odd looks, because I was crying. I went back to my empty apartment (I'd cleaned it out, brave, not sure if any of us were coming back). I called my boss and asked for my job back. I climbed back into my life.

The world is breaking down, burning up, choking. I've run the numbers, along with my closest friends. We're past the ordinary point of no return. I had a chance to save it, and I failed. All that's left for me is to enjoy my life in the usual way, to try to excel (though scientific and entrepreneurial breakthroughs ring hollow to me now as they should ring hollow to no one else in the world).

No one has found them, my gifted, idealist friends, my beloved Garth. Sometimes I tell myself that if I - and only I - go back to where I left them, they'll still be there, caught in the moment where I left in them, pinned in an agony where the real and the surreal clash like waves against rock, and if I choose to and am brave enough, I could take their hands again and complete the circle and the ritual would be completed. Sometimes I tell myself that that's stupid, that there's only so much magic can do, and it, like all things, obeys its own laws. I tell myself I can't undo what I did back there. 

And then part of me, the most cowardly part, says that if I _can_ go back, and can re-start the ritual that has them frozen, then what harm does it do to live a few more years of life first?

It hasn't worked out so far. I have seen some beautiful sunsets, met some beautiful people, and even accomplished things in my own field that I would be proud of in an ordinary life. But all that these transformative moments inspire in me is a desire for more. Faced with a real and meaningful choice of obliteration, I've become an ordinary person with a mindset of pursuing immortality.

And I tell myself I'm no worse than anyone else who isn't saving the world, who's only trying to live in it. But it rings hollow. I had a truly unique chance once, and maybe I still do. If I could go back and try again - to that instance where we were all on the cusp of dissolving into ideas - then I must. One day. Even if I go only to fail. Even if I go only so that I can hear Garth's desperate voice as he is finally released to finish saying my name.


End file.
